Served Cold
It started as chicken salad,
and turned into a forest of bayonets
puncturing the sky
like a dullard with darning-needles
and a bellyful of ale.
The lettuce was Little Gem,
and the radishes were soft knuckles
bruising the chins
of witnesses with lightless smiles
on the pit's edge.
Watercress thins the blood
of the dying, who aggravate the mud
with their twists and shifts
as if they were playing strip canasta
with a bunch of puppets.
And a drizzle of olive oil
over the polished corpses who
lounged
in the way that seasiders must, in
broken deckchairs.